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But the article doesn't mention that Sears is planning to lease more space in that building for their online business and now CPS is moving in? I guess it's good there's more loop office workers, but you can tell the strategy in that building has been to gradually convert the place into office only with shopping on the ground floor.

I kind of like the multi-level retail but it seems modern retail stores rarely go above 3-4 floors unless they are in a mall.

In skyscraper news, 200 N. Michigan is officially a go. Demolition on the current site is proceeding. Really love the design of this tower. At has a "Magnificent Mile" look to it, which unfortunately portions of the stretch from Millennium to the river either look distressed or too corporate. The ground floor of this development certainly has a better retail vocabulary to it which will hopefully attract a big tenant.

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Here's some pictures I took of the new Bulls practice facility on my way to watch the Blackhawks - Wings game. It's one surface lot that will bite the dust outside of the pavement parking prairie surrounding the UC.

Citizens Financial Group has paved the way for the O’Donnell Investment Co.’s $500 million development of 150 N. Riverside, a nearly 1.4 million-square-foot office high-rise in Chicago’s coveted West Loop submarket. Citizens Financial, Bank of America and Helaba—co-lead arrangers and joint bookrunners—provided the developer with a $296 million construction loan.

The project was a magnet for investors, but there were a few reasons why the Citizens Financial-led consortium emerged victorious in the competition, one of which was reliability. “I think what our clients look for is certainty of execution, so when we say we’re going to do something, we do it,” Gary Magnuson, head of commercial real estate finance at RBS Citizens, the commercial banking arm of Citizens Financial, told Commercial Property Executive. “There’s a high level of confidence in our ability to deliver on time with reasonable terms.”

There’s a reason for the half-billion-dollar development price tag and big-ticket financing for 150 N. Riverside. Towering 53 stories above the Chicago River on a parcel that had sat vacant for quite some time, the Goettsch Partners-designed skyscraper will be a premier office destination, providing 1.2 million square feet of leasable state-of-the-art office space, as well as 12,000 square feet of on-site food service, a 7,000-square-foot fitness center, all surrounded by a 1.5-acre park. The property boasts LEED-CS Gold pre-certification, obtained through the incorporation of a host of features, including a 100 percent green roof. Further adding to its sustainability, the building will feature a bike room accommodating more than 100 bikes and serve as a model of transit-oriented development with a location within immediate proximity to Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center and a host of “L” stops.

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege." -- Tommy Douglas, Scottish-born Canadian Baptist minister and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan

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New updated rendering showing the new McCormick Hotel and basketball arena now on the north side of Cermak. The historic ABC warehouse will be incorporated. The only building standing in the way a historic graystone. That building is currently being moved to another location. Not pictured is another hotel tower proposed across the street. That will also rehab a bunch of historic buildings next door.

Since Eddie Bauer moved to their new store, under armor will take over this space. I also noticed Harley Davidson will moving into the 2nd floor of the Ritz Carlton with Shake shack is now open in the previous Harley space on Ohio.

Also heard that All Saints will move to a new boutique location which means the Mich ave space will be freed up. I have a gut feeling Apple may be interested but who knows. But that would mean the existing apple space would become available.

Also lots of work going on at the Uniqlo store on the 5th and 6th floors of the Bonwit Teller building, which also features a new Verizon flagship And what appears to be an in-process facade renovation of H&M.

Still waiting on tenants to be announced for two hundred north and the Northbridge Mall expansion. (New department store?). A couple new tenants opened at millenniun plaza and the new Blackhawks store on the 2nd level of 333 North.

Its filling in a hole left from when Cabrini Green was demolished. I'm looking forward to seeing the final results - architecture isn't special but I'm interested in seeing how it will make that corner a bit more vibrant.

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Hm, that looks like a pretty bland development. Essentially a mall with a couple of non-descript towers and parking garages. Maybe this isn't a fair comparison, but I thought of New York's Atlantic Yards as being a similar large scale, multi-tower infill project, and the difference between the two is staggering.

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Hm, that looks like a pretty bland development. Essentially a mall with a couple of non-descript towers and parking garages. Maybe this isn't a fair comparison, but I thought of New York's Atlantic Yards as being a similar large scale, multi-tower infill project, and the difference between the two is staggering.

Wasn't saying it was anything great, but its very large scale on an area that was a very large empty field and more than a bit of a dead zone that's lied fallow for many years - what was there before was massive public housing blocks and other mid century junk so I do see this as an improvement. I wish it was better looking, but the alderman there is particularly corruptible and I'm sure the developers lined his campaign wallet.

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Compared to Cabrini Green and it's old surroundings this development is like Paris. Not quite sure what some were expecting. Not every urban neighborhood can be 100% upscale gentrification. This is still a "transition" area at best.

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The architecture of new city is disastrous. I don't know why they chose such a jumbled collection of materials. I would have played off the 50's streamline modernism of the station, some of that which is evident in the tower. Maybe have a total aluminum clad base with nice rounded corners. That would have been spectacular instead of the clunky brick facades and circus tent metal panel.

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And, one development I haven't heard much on, but a new building on the City Farm site which is just to the right of the photo I took. The farm will be moving to a bigger location down the street.

In the 10 years since I've been living in Chicago and traveling to beforehand, I've taken quite a few photos of Cabrini when the projects were still active, were demolished and then rebuilt as new apartment towers, condos, townhouses, malls and department stores. Same can be said for Prairie shores which looks like a boomtown these days.

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And, one development I haven't heard much on, but a new building on the City Farm site which is just to the right of the photo I took. The farm will be moving to a bigger location down the street.

In the 10 years since I've been living in Chicago and traveling to beforehand, I've taken quite a few photos of Cabrini when the projects were still active, were demolished and then rebuilt as new apartment towers, condos, townhouses, malls and department stores. Same can be said for Prairie shores which looks like a boomtown these days.

Is the white building the one that's going in right across from the Target on Division? That one looks pretty good.

And yeah New City is architecturally pretty terrible, but its a huge upgrade from what was there before.

The amount of retail in the North / Clybourn corridor is insanity. I'm liking all the towers going up along Blackhawk but the traffic from all the malls and parking garages has made this area a nightmare. Just wait until New City opens and all those cars will try to be turning on Halsted. I don't drive, so yeah...the traffic isn't a big deal to me. But for anyone who is a pedestrian or cyclist in that area it's a deadly adventure. Narrow sidewalks, obsolete bike lane design, cars existing hidden driveways, backed up turn lanes. It's become quite a mess.

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I'm surprised that the 606 a project to create Chicago's Bikeable version of the High Line hasn't been discussed here. This is an old railroad viaduct turned into trail/linear park (the park is the 606 the trail is the bloomingdale Trail after the rail line the preceded it) that stretches from Ashland Ave in Bucktown all the way over to Ridgeland Ave in Humboldt park. Its been a bit overcrowded due to it opening recently, with way too many dog walkers and strollers to be an ideal bicycle route, but its a really pretty park and riding on it in spite of the crowds is a lot of fun:

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The amount of retail in the North / Clybourn corridor is insanity. I'm liking all the towers going up along Blackhawk but the traffic from all the malls and parking garages has made this area a nightmare. Just wait until New City opens and all those cars will try to be turning on Halsted. I don't drive, so yeah...the traffic isn't a big deal to me. But for anyone who is a pedestrian or cyclist in that area it's a deadly adventure. Narrow sidewalks, obsolete bike lane design, cars existing hidden driveways, backed up turn lanes. It's become quite a mess.

Yeah, this is going to awful, I frequently use the halstead bus as a shortcut to get to the north side - I've got a feeling backups are going to make this quite a bit more difficult once this project comes online :(

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Yeah I got in a debate with a friend in Logan Square about this - she didn't understand the basic economics of why having a larger apartment complex would be good for the neighborhood. Too many people get caught in this myth of small town compact neighborhood even though Logan Square is right off a 24 hour transit line that just happens to be one of the more busy ones in the whole country.

I'm generally supportive of city policies that are encouraging station near TOD, because there are large swaths of development near EL lines that are underutilized and in order to keep rent down long term this is the best way to utilize both Chicago's transit infrastructure and support the growing demands for urban living that otherwise would swamp all neighborhoods near transit eventually leading to a San Francisco like gentrification crisis (which won't happen for a long time in Chicago, but the city needs to act now to prevent that from happening later - I have a feeling there will be a point where the growing parts of town will surpass the shrinking parts of town too - the last census was also distorted by the massive amounts of public housing teardowns last decade too...)

She also was concerned about gentrification, but I feel this sort of thing addresses it, by providing more supply to meet high demand than a smaller development would provide. So long as the development looks good I don't have a problem and in its current form it looks pretty great and its totally better than what it replaced asthetically.

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege." -- Tommy Douglas, Scottish-born Canadian Baptist minister and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan

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Lots of ugly staggered windows with grey/silver materials (an architectural trend of the 2010s), but in general interesting projects. From strictly a functional perspective the one in Lincoln Square is great - it had to overcome a lot of NIMBY push back even though its located at the intersection of one of the most popular bus lines with the brown line train. Currently only architecturally insignificant low rise buildings exist on that site and Lincoln Square is a very nice shopping district so the density is already in the area though Western is a lot less utilized than the stretch of Lincoln they narrowed to create the square as a "German Village" back in the 1970s (there still are German-American cultural institutions there, but most of the population doesn't really exist anymore as it was mostly last wave post WWII germans).

In short its really great for the area.

I'm a pretty big fan of the TOD ordnance btw, its a great way to strategically grow parts of the city that are closest to transit lines - perhaps its a way to prevent more of the disaster that is Lincoln Park in terms of de-densifying near transit lines.

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege." -- Tommy Douglas, Scottish-born Canadian Baptist minister and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan

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If every tower ever planned was built no major city would look the same as it does now. It's astonishing just how many massive buildings are proposed but never make it anywhere.

Chicago has no less than three proposals for 2,000 foot tall towers that never got built from the 80s to now. All three extremely interesting in their own manner and would have made a wildly different skyline for Chicago.

On top of that there are probably a dozen other supertall proposals that were very serious but never went anywhere for one reason or another. I remember reading somewhere that the moment some company in Chicago proposes a new tallest in the city is when you need to start liquidating any real estate assets you may have because the market is about to crash. And for many decades this has held true.